New Team Millennium/KWS Suzuki rider Matt Lynn’s cell phone is getting terrible service in rainy Georgia, but the 21-year-old talks on, anxious to be heard. Entering only his second full season of AMA competition, Lynn is anxious to be seen, too, and the former Team Embry pilot hopes his move to the Suzuki support squad will help make 2006 a breakout season.
By Laurel C. Allen

Congratulations on your new ride. How did that deal develop?
Well, we’d started talking to [team owner] Kevin Hunt toward the end of last year—we basically just had an open dialogue with the team about how stuff was going—and then I won the WERA race at Road Atlanta for the Suzuki cup, and that kind of helped my record out a little bit. After that they seemed like they were into it, and we were into it, so we just tried to get a couple of things tidied up with the mechanic who’s going to be helping me out next year, Rick Matheny.

It’ll be my first full year working with Rick, which is really good, because I worked with him twice last year—once at V.I.R. and once at Road Atlanta for the Suzuki Cup—and our results together have been really good; he’s a really good mechanic and he helps me settle down. He can get in my mind and help me figure stuff out as far as what I can do better, and he’s just a real calming influence, which helps out a lot. We click really well. Once we got all that going—finding out if Rick was going to be available to help me out next year, which he is—that was pretty much the end of last year. So it looks good now; it looks positive. Everybody’s really pumped up.

What classes will you be riding in ’06?
Primarily I’ll focus on Superstock, but I will be riding some Superbike races, as well. We’ll just try to pick and choose which ones I want to do on which weekends. Obviously at a place like Laguna Seca—where we’re not going to have a whole lot of setup time, plus it’s a one-round event, and it’s a big deal—I’ll definitely run it there. I’m still debating whether or not I’m going to run Daytona Superbike, because Daytona’s not my favorite track in the world, but we’ll see. A lot of it is just going to be how I feel and if I want to do it; I mean, obviously it’s a good paycheck at the end of the weekend, so that’s the main motivation for doing it.

Thoughts about your new teammate?
John Haner is going to be my teammate, so I’m pretty happy about that. John has been racing a long time and obviously has a lot more experience than me, so I’ll be able to ask him questions and talk to him about stuff. We joke around and get along pretty good, so I’m happy about it.

What was the biggest lesson you learned from ’05?
To calm down a little bit more—I really tend to get ahead of myself and get frustrated. I have a lot of high expectations for myself and tend to put a lot of pressure on myself, maybe more than a lot of people do, and I think that ends up coming around and biting me. I got hurt at Infineon last year, and that was definitely part of the reason I got hurt. I just wasn’t having a good morning, and it sounds kind of stupid but the brake reservoir cup came off and we had to tighten that, and then earlier in the practice session a bee got in my leathers and was stinging me, so I had to pull off the track and didn’t really get good practice.

I was really frustrated, so when I went out there for qualifying, I tried to go fast in a section of the track that I was already fast in, and just flicked myself. I ended up separating my shoulder, which put me out for three rounds. So I learned to be a little more patient with myself and think about what I’m doing, as opposed to just going out there and doing it. I mean, a lot of it for me is also just getting in more riding. The more I can stay on the bike, the better my results are. I stayed on the bike a lot toward the end of the season just in general, as far as riding—I rode more weekends, I did some WERA club stuff in between the AMA rounds, and we just recently put an XR100 flat track in at my house, so I’ve been riding that every day now. I rode a lot before the GNF, and my results spoke for themselves. So I think a lot of it is just riding as much as possible, as I guess any racer would say. The more you ride, the better.

Is your confidence significantly greater going into this year?
Yeah, it is, and I think confidence plays a pretty big part in things. I can’t speak for everybody, but for me last year was definitely a learning year, trying to get the feel of the whole paddock and being around everything. I kind of know the method of operation now—how races work, how qualifying works, how things flow throughout the weekend, so it should be a lot more comfortable for me this year. Just going in and knowing more people in the paddock, too, to go talk to and be around is helpful.

What do you think you’d be doing if you weren’t road racing right now?
Man, that’s a tough question. I’d probably just be working a 9-to-5 job and riding bicycles all the time. Maybe working at a motorcycle shop, or who knows. Glad I’m not.

Have you had any time on you new bikes yet?
No, the team just picked up the bikes last week and they are building them now, and I hope they can get all that stuff done and we can go down to Jennings [Raceway] before Daytona and give the bikes a good shakedown; go down there for a couple days and just test. That’s the plan, and I know John is eager to get his bikes, too.

So what are your goals for this year?
Well, my main goals are to stay healthy, healthier than I did last year, and to get a snowball effect going. I mean, start by getting through Daytona—‘cause that’s a pretty big race to get through at the beginning of the year; it kind of makes or breaks the way things are going to go for you—and then build like a snowball, just get my results better and better and better each weekend until the end of the year. Hopefully I can have steady top-10 finishes in Superstock. I just think it’s going to be a really good season. We’ve got a really good package, and the team is looking forward to it, I know that.